"Homer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away last evening somehow. A wan electric light half lit the room after dark; the souls "twittered" like Homer's in dejected knots. "Fatigues all day, and a pass into town once a week," seem to be the prospect. Reveille to-day at six. At parade, after breakfast, I was told off to act as an office orderly to Captain Davies, the Inspector of Ordnance, an all-day job, but otherwise with possibilities ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... Deleim, the whole country is in a blaze of light of a summer's evening; music, dancing, and rejoicing, is heard in every direction. Their music consists of a kettle-drum, a flute or reed, similar to what Homer describes as the instrument of the ancient shepherds, a rhabeb or two-stringed fiddle, played with a semicircular bow, a tamboureen, and brass castanets. They play in precise time; and the ladies arrange themselves ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... world's loud praise is thine, And spleen no more shall blame; When with thy Homer thou shalt shine In ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Tartar studies; let Quatremere de Quincy, explaining the structure of the great chryselephantine statues, reproduce conjecturally the surface of ivory and the internal framework of the Olympian Jupiter; let D'Ansse de Villoison discover in Venice the commentary of the Alexandrian critics on Homer; let Larcher, Boissonade, Clavier, alongside of Coray publish their editions of the old Greek authors—all this causes no trouble, and all is for the honor of the government. Their credit reflects ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Name the three Epics of greatest note. Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, and Milton's ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... captives. I have looked up the lotus, about which so much is said or sung and so little definitely known, and find it is a prickly shrub of Africa, bearing a fruit of a sweet taste, and the early Greeks knew all about its power. Homer in the Odyssey says that whoever ate of the fruit wished never to depart nor again to see his native land. Many of Ulysses' sailors ate this fruit, and lost all ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... "'Mellinger,' says the man—'Homer P. Mellinger. Boys, you're confiscated. You're babes in the wood without a chaperon or referee, and it's my duty to start you going. I'll knock out the props and launch you proper in the pellucid waters of this tropical ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Homer tells in the Odyssey how the sons of Autolycus cured Ulysses, who had been injured while hunting the wild boar, by stanching the blood flowing from a wound in his leg, by means of a verbal charm. "With nicest care the skilful artists bound the brave, divine Ulysses' ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Cressid" (and in a sense even with Shakespere's drama on the theme of Chaucer's poem), may be said to belong to the second cycle of modern versions of the tale of Troy divine. Already their earlier predecessors had gone far astray from Homer, of whom they only know by hearsay, relying for their facts on late Latin epitomes, which freely mutilated and perverted the Homeric narrative in favour of the Trojans—the supposed ancestors of half the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... own brings us into closest sympathy with certain great personalities of this antique world. Differences of time, race, civilization, are powerless to prevent our intimate friendship and reverence for Homer, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... saw four giant shadows coming on. They seemed nor sad nor joyous in their mien. And my good master said: "See him, my son, That bears the sword and walks before the rest, And seems the father of the three,—that one Is Homer, sovran poet. The satirist Horace comes next; third, Ovid; and the last Is Lucan. The lone voice that name expressed That each doth share with me; therefore they haste To greet and do me honor;—nor do ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... us if they please, and tell us why children of the simplest minds and the purest hearts are often so acute to distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, the difference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer and Racine,—echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they repeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from her studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward child,—wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in her moods, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in music; and the seventh, in painting: and whenever Pietro wished for information or instruction in any of these arts, he had only to go to his crystal vase and liberate the presiding spirit. Immediately all the secrets of the art were revealed to him; and he might, if it pleased him, excel Homer in poetry, Apelles in painting, or Pythagoras himself in philosophy. Although he could make gold out of brass, it was said of him that he was very sparing of his powers in that respect, and kept himself constantly supplied with money by other and less creditable means. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... merit, who was to act as tutor to my son, Woronzow Greig, then attending the High School, of which Mr. Pillans was master. Mr. Finlayson was a remarkably good Greek scholar, and my husband said, "Why not take advantage of such an opportunity of improvement?" So I read Homer for an hour every morning before breakfast. Mr. Finlayson joined the army as surgeon, and distinguished himself by his courage and humanity during the battle of Waterloo; but he was lost in the march of the army to Paris, and his brother George, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... the nose straight and proportioned to the thin lips; the eyes large and bright, with very black pupils, surrounded by the clearest white, each color more brilliant by contrast. Her hair is naturally curled, and, as Homer's saying is, like the hyacinth. The neck is white and proportioned to the face, and though unadorned more conspicuous by its delicacy; but a necklace of gems encircles it, on which her name is written in jewels. She is tall and elegantly dressed in garments fitted to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been told, had yielded to love, "which subdues the hearts of all female women, even of the prudent," according to Homer, and was going to share the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas Cranley as a kind good Christian ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... of some such yellow-haired Priscilla that Homer dreamed when he smote his lyre and chanted, "I sing of arms and the man"; it was at the sight of such as she that rare Ben Johnson's Dr. Faustus cried, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" In all ages has such beauty ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... to the unobservant, our hearts warm more readily to those we have benefited than to our benefactors. Some of the Greek philosophers noticed this; but the British Homer has stamped it ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a dark night. I wonder how long before she will reappear? Are the people in the moon staring through an eclipse of the Sun? I should like to see her come out again, and clothe herself in splendor. I think I will go back to Walden. Ah! even my philosopher, aping Homer, nods. It shimmers a little, on the lake, among ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... joke, and never fails to elicit the applause of the audience; but still the question remains unanswered: Who wrote Shakspeare? a question, we humbly think, which might be made the theme for as much critical sagacity, pertinacity, and pugnacity, as the almost equally interesting question, who wrote Homer? In the former case, the question is certainly in one respect more simple, for the recognised plays and poems that go by Shakspeare's name are—at least by far the larger portion—unquestionably from one and the same pen; while Homer, poor, dear, awful, august, much-abused shade! has been torn by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... become connected with the names of great writers. Indeed, the saying that there is nothing new under the sun applies with such force and fidelity to literature that, if we should strip Hesiod and Homer and Chaucer of such phrases as "The half is greater than the whole," "It is a wise son that knows his own father" (which Shakespeare quotes the other end about), and "To make a virtue of necessity," and if we should further eliminate ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... a fair trial of Bang. Do bring down some of the Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give a fair trial to Opium, Henbane, and Nepenthe. By the bye, I always considered Homer's account of the Nepenthe ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... less controversy about the proper method of Homeric translation, if critics bad recognised that the question is a purely relative one, that of Homer there can be no final translation. The taste and the literary habits of each age demand different qualities in poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would have ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... by making herself the scapegoat or single unit on whom the evil would fall. Ought a possibly large number, Swithin included, to remain unbenefited because the one individual to whom his release would be an injury chanced to be herself? Love between man and woman, which in Homer, Moses, and other early exhibitors of life, is mere desire, had for centuries past so far broadened as to include sympathy and friendship; surely it should in this advanced stage of the world include benevolence also. If so, it was her duty to set ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Besides, I am ashamed to say, that I cannot imagine love in the midst of poverty. Perhaps this is a vitiation due to that malady of mankind called civilization; but a woman in squalid poverty would exert no fascination over me, were she attractive as Homer's ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... have always observed in your royal highness an extreme concernment for the honour of your country; it is a passion common to you with a brother, the most excellent of kings; and in your two persons are eminent the characters which Homer has given us of heroick virtue; the commanding part in Agamemnon, and the executive in Achilles. And I doubt not from both your actions, but to have abundant matter to fill the annals of a glorious reign, and to perform the part of a just historian to my royal master, without intermixing with ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... have perused with pleasure. The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems. It is amusing to observe with what labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of Homer, some hints as to his situation and feelings. According to one hypothesis, he intended to describe himself under the name of Demodocus. Others maintain that he was the identical Phemius whose life Ulysses spared. This propensity of the human mind explains, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... something of the pleasurable effect that would arise from its really being true. We see a play, and for the time make ourselves believe that the painted canvas is the Forest of Arden, that the painted man is Orlando, and the painted woman Rosalind. When we read Homer, we make ourselves believe in the Greek heroes and gods. We know these make-believes are not realities, but we feel that they are; we have the sensations that would be effected by their reality. Now this self-deception can be carried to great lengths. We know ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... being invaded by the rocks was thus repeated with the grand monotony of the abyss. The battles of the ocean have the same sublime tautology as the combats of Homer. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... class, is good for the other," he argued. "If the poor have not as many comforts, that is no reason why they should be denied an acquaintance with Homer and Shakespeare; the names of the stars which guide them across the ocean, or of the plants which grow on the earth. They will soon see them laid low by their ploughs, but in their infancy at least they will have drunk from pure sources, and participated in the common patrimony ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... Homer the blind— I'll show you a poet that's blinder: You may see him whene'er you've a mind In Gally i.o. the Grinder. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... principles and knowing no rein to its passions. But the fact becomes still more striking if we consider the immense antiquity of the clan organization. It is now known that the primitive Semites, the Greeks of Homer, the prehistoric Romans, the Germans of Tacitus, the early Celts and the early Slavonians, all have had their own period of clan organization, closely analogous to that of the Australians, the Red Indians, the Eskimos, and other inhabitants ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... peasant-girl was seized upon by some errant knight of palette and brush, and painted for her beauty. These women are what you men call fine creatures. Their limbs are rounded and shapely, their figures full and lithe; they are what I've heard you say Homer calls Briseis. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Otus and Ephialtes, in ancient Greek legend, the twin-sons of Poseidon by Iphimedeia, wife of Aloeus. They were celebrated for their extraordinary stature and strength. According to Homer (Od. xi. 305). they made war upon the Olympian gods and endeavoured to pile Pelion upon Ossa in order to storm heaven itself; had they reached the age of manhood, their attempt would have been successful, but Apollo destroyed them ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... salt and cummin? Apollophanes the grammarian presently satisfied him, saying, by that proverb were meant intimate acquaintance, who could sup together on salt and cummin. Thence we proceeded to inquire how salt should come to be so much honored as it is; for Homer plainly says, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... as the annals of warfare can hardly parallel. Each officer, as he was able to collect twenty or thirty men around him, advanced into the midst of the enemy, where they fought hand to hand, bayonet to bayonet, and sword to sword, with the tumult and ferocity of Homer's combats before the walls of Troy. Attacked unexpectedly in the dark, and surrounded by enemies before we could arrange to oppose them, no order or discipline of war could be preserved. We were ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... feelings of the liveliest pain that we inform our readers of the death of the Reverend Homer Wilbur, A.M., which took place suddenly, by an apoplectic stroke, on the afternoon of Christmas day, 1862. Our venerable friend (for so we may venture to call him, though we never enjoyed the high privilege of his personal acquaintance) was in his eighty-fourth year, having ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... enemies in battle, and ferocious-looking even in time of peace. Their civilisation was of a much higher type than that of the Iberians; their weapons, their war-chariots, their mode of life and their treatment of women, are all so closely similar to that of the Greeks of Homer that a theory has been advanced and ably defended, that the Homeric Greeks were really invading Celts—Gaelic or Gaulish tribes from the north of Europe. If it indeed be so, we owe to the Celts a debt of imperishable culture and civilisation. To them belongs more especially, in our ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... is, "Ariosto may be matched with, perhaps excelled by, Homer; but where is the Greek poet to set on the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... war to the closer and more deadly hand-to-hand combat of sword and axe, of the shock of the contending forces, the hopes and fears of victory and defeat, the deeds of desperate valor, the mighty achievements of noted chiefs, on that hard-fought field no Homer has sung, and they must remain untold. All we know is that the Danes fought with desperate valor, the English with a courage inspired by revenge, fear of slavery, thirst for liberty, and the undaunted resolution of men whose ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... has contrived to retain at heart so much childish simplicity. When a man for a series of years has only had his wits to live by, I say not that he is necessarily a rogue,—he may be a good fellow; but you can scarcely expect his code of honour to be precisely the same as Sir Philip Sidney's. Homer expresses through the lips of Achilles that sublime love of truth which even in those remote times was the becoming characteristic of a gentleman and a soldier. But then, Achilles is well off during his whole life, which, though ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a person to obtain pecuniary compensation for personal injuries, appear to be founded on very ancient precedent. Mr. Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, gives a statement of the sums at which our ancestors valued the various parts of their earthly tenements. He says "Homer is celebrated for discriminating the wounds of his heroes with anatomical precision. The Saxon legislators were not less anxious to distinguish between the different wounds to which the body is liable, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... desirous of, or to unravel their historical riddle. Some writers speak of them as if they were only a few mounds and graves, scarcely worthy of notice; yet they are such mounds as are found yet in the Trojan plains, sung by Homer, dating at least three thousand years ago, and even by many deemed earlier than the Trojan war, and still existing to this day to baffle our inquiries: while similar monuments existing by thousands in the plains of Scythia and Tartary, Persia ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... Chardin and other travellers testify, that this practice is preserved in modern times. In Homer's Odyssey the custom of taking a bath before a banquet is frequently mentioned, III, 467; IV, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... you?" he said. "This is what we call long grass"; and he asked if I could "see any track now." "It's as plain as a pikestaff," he declared, trying to show what he called a "clear break all the way." "Oh I'm a dead homer all right," he shouted after further going as we came out ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Metropolitan! I go home without seeing a Velasquez. They have the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe collection, thousands of square yards of it, and yes, cheer up! Thank heaven, they have some great Americans, Inness and Martin and Homer and our exile Whistler, who annexed Japan, and our Sargent, born in Florence. And I did see the Metropolitan tower. I take off my hat, my broad-brimmed hat, wishing that it were as big as a carter's umbrella, to that tower. I hate to think ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... revisit the haunts of childhood. But there was essential greatness in that neglected bardic literature which O'Grady was the first to reveal in a noble manner. He had the spirit of an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his birth delayed in time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated people the elemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world was young and manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than thought or beauty or feeling. He has created for us or rediscovered ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... system by which the old Polynesian chiefs and priests, totally without letters, or even ideographs, except in Easter Island, kept the archives of the tribe and nation by frequent repetition of memorized annals. So we got Homer's Odyssey, and the Song ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... is thought to be the oldest, as it is one of the noblest in the Spanish language. Written probably not later than the year 1200, it is of about three thousand lines in length, and of such merit that its unknown author has been designated the "Homer of Spain." As it was written soon after the death of the Cid, it could not have deviated far from historic truth. Chief among the prose works is the "Chronicle of the Cid,"—Chronica del famoso ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... fact, superior to the Corinthians in wealth and power, and their fleet, numbering a hundred and twenty triremes, was second only to that of Athens. Corcyra was famous in legend as the seat of the Phaeacians, a heroic sailor race, whose deeds are sung by Homer in the Odyssey; and the Corcyraeans regarded themselves as the lawful inheritors of their fame. For all these reasons they despised the Corinthians, and made no secret of their contempt. Remembering the many occasions ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... bust me up a heap if it ever does git in here," remarked Tom Osby one morning in the forum of Whiteman's corral, where the accustomed group was sitting in the sun, waiting for some one to volunteer as Homer for ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... lord spoke highly of Homer. JOHNSON. 'He had all the learning of his age. The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a nation in peace; harvest sport, nay stealing.' [Footnote: My note of this is much too short. Brevis esse laboro, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... independence such as may not improperly be compared with the most glorious struggles recorded in the annals of liberty, and of a state of society perhaps the most romantic and the most nearly resembling that described in the songs of Homer which the progress of civilization has now left for the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... linen draper, converted to the Catholic faith; not regularly educated, owing to his frail and sickly body; began to write in boyhood, and before he was seventeen had met the leading literary men of London; his "Essay on Criticism," published in 1711, translation of Homer in 1720 and 1725, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... is literally inhuman. The use of such words are due to temporary forgetfulness in such connections. Like Homer, Vyasa ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... causes. We read of Orpheus [c], of Linus, and, if we choose to mount still higher, we can add the name of Apollo himself. This may seem a flight of fancy. Aper will treat it as mere romance, and fabulous history: but he will not deny, that the veneration paid to Homer, with the consent of posterity, is at least equal to the honours obtained by Demosthenes. He must likewise admit, that the fame of Sophocles and Euripides is not confined within narrower limits ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the Christian ra,) proves to have been a marvellously precocious Infant. He wrote the Song of Moses in the year of his birth. Nay, he built pyramids,—had a Literature, Arts, and Sciences,—ages before he was born!... While yet an infant, he sang with Homer, and carved with Phidias, and philosophized with Aristotle,—as none have ever sung, or carved, or philosophized since. Times and fashions have altered, truly; but these three men are still our Masters in Philosophy, in Sculpture, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... of fruit that we say at the same time is ripening into gold." Upon which Pope observes:—"I think yellow may be s'd to ripen into gold, as gold is a deeper, fuller colour than yellow." Again: "What is proper in one language, may not be so in another. Were Homer to call the sea a thousand times by the title of [Greek: porphureos], 'purple deeps' would not sound well in English. The reason's evident: the word 'purple' among us is confined to one colour, and that not very applicable to the deep. Was any one to translate ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Grecian and Roman writings no mention is made of either the coffee plant or the beverage made from the berries. Pierre (Pietro) Delia Valle[28] (1586-1652), however, maintains that the nepenthe, which Homer says Helen brought with her out of Egypt, and which she employed as surcease for sorrow, was nothing else but coffee mixed with wine.[29] This is disputed by M. Petit, a well known physician of Paris, who died in 1687. Several later British authors, among them, Sandys, the poet; Burton; and Sir ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... other animals, or not distinct enough in them to have a specific utterance. There might seem to be something almost physical in the sensation, as it can be excited by tickling, or the inhalation of gas. Similar results may be produced by other bodily causes. Homer speaks of the chiefs laughing after a sumptuous banquet, and of a man "laughing sweetly" when drunk. Bacon's term titillatio, would seem very appropriate in such cases. There was an idea, in olden times, that laughter ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... exordium, I feel a little ashamed of my hero, and could wish, for the credit of my tale, it were not more necessary to invoke the historic muse of Fielding, than that of Homer or Tasso; but imperious Truth obliges me to confess, that Tallien, who is to be the subject of this letter, was first introduced to celebrity by circumstances not favourable for the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... is natural, for they had been in the world, had loved and suffered, so long before us that they seem a part of that antenatal mystery out of which we sprang. When they speak of their old love-stories, it is as though we were reading Homer. It sounds so long ago. We are surprised at the vividness with which they recall happenings and personalities, past and gone before, as they tell us, we were born. Before we were born! Yes! They belong to that mysterious epoch of ...
— Different Girls • Various
... face of a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the return of a homer. ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... children. Those works alone can have enduring success which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human nature—which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of the day; but even temperary success implies a certain temporary fitness. In Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakspeare, Cervantes, we are made aware of much that no longer accords with the wisdom or the taste of our day—temporary and immature expressions of fluctuating opinions—but we are ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought,— Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung? —BULWER. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... associations of Art and History, he yet joined with much interest in any pilgrimage to those places which tradition had sanctified. At the Fountain of Arethusa, one of the spots of this kind which he visited, a repast had been prepared for himself and his party by the Resident; and at the School of Homer,—as some remains beyond Chioni are called,—he met with an old refugee bishop, whom he had known thirteen years before in Livadia, and with whom he now conversed of those times, with a rapidity and freshness of recollection with which the memory of the old bishop ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and Arthur are unlike those ever held towards a king even by an enchanter in any legend. Even in Homer there is no one described, except the gods, as having such authority over a ruler. Merlin came and went as he pleased and under any form he might please. He foretold the result of a battle, ordered up troops, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... A word borrowed from Homer, signifying properly a round stone fit for rolling, or a stone that has been made round by rolling, as a pebble in the sea. It was originally an adjective, with [Greek: petros] understood. Most critics suppose it to be from [Greek: ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... was first published in the Monthly Religious Magazine, Boston, for October, 1851. One or another professor of chronology has since taken pains to tell me that it is impossible. But until they satisfy themselves whether Homer ever lived at all, I shall hold to the note which I wrote to Miss Dryasdust's cousin, which I printed originally at the end of the article, and which will be found there in this collection. The difficulties in the geography are perhaps worse than ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Anglo and Graecomania were combined. The latter had, however, also its particular school, in which each of the Greek and Roman poets found his imitator. Voss, for instance, took Homer for his model, Ramler, Horace, Gleim, Anacreon, Gessner, Theocritus, Cramer, Pindar, Lichtwer, AEsop, etc. The Germans, in the ridiculous attempt to set themselves up as Greeks, were, in truth, barbarians. But all was forced, unnatural, and perverted in this ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... place of the parent. He aids in giving character to the generations of men; which is at once a higher art and a purer glory than distinguishes those who build the walls of cities, or lay the foundations of empires. The cities which contested for the honor of being the birthplace of Homer are forgotten, or remembered only because they contested for the honor, while Homer himself is immortal. If, then, the mere birth of a human being is an honor to a city, how illustrious the distinction of those who guide the footsteps of youth along the rugged paths of learning, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... Comparisons proving that Nature shows the Existence of its Maker. First Comparison, drawn from Homer's "Iliad." ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar—while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!—Many were the "wit-combats," (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller,) between him and C.V. Le G——, "which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... former hold the well-known maxim of "Honor among thieves" in reverence, and steal only from the public, while the latter, less scrupulous, steal unblushingly from one another. This truth is as old as Homer, and its proofs are as capable of demonstration as a mathematical axiom. Should the alliance between the two professions be questioned, the following case will ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... enjoying since you left me, the most exquisite entertainment, in the perusal of the noble works of Ossian, the greatest poet, in my opinion, that ever composed, and who exceeds Homer, Virgil, and Milton. He transports us by the grandeur of his sublime, or by some sudden start of tenderness he melts us into distress: Who can read, without the warmest emotions, the pathetic complaints of the ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... he must pardon me if I have that veneration for Aristotle, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Corneille, that I dare not serve him in such a cause, and against such heroes, but rather fight under their protection, as Homer reports of little Teucer, who shot the Trojans from under the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Odyssey have been called the Bible of the Greeks, and children early learned extracts from the works of the great poet, Homer. The Spartan mother was highly respected by her husband and her children, and she was noted for her chastity and nobility of character. She entered fully into the Spartan idea, and cheerfully gave her sons to her country, while she often inspired them to deeds of ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... limitation of his people and his epoch. It is a hint of which we, looking back through more than twenty-five centuries can see the full meaning, as that meaning has unfolded itself in the ages. Time is also a commentator on Homer and has written down, in that alphabet of his, called events, the true interpretation of the old poet. Still the letters of Time's alphabet have also to be learned and require not only ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... monsieur," said Bussy; "it was very well for Homer's heroes, who were demigods, to talk before they fought; but I am a man—attack me, ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... medical treatment. If none of these things seemed demanded, I smoked my pipe. To me one afternoon came a big-framed, old, dignified man, with the heavy beard, the noble features, the high forehead, and the blank statue eyes of the blind Homer. He was led by a very small, very bright-eyed naked boy. At some twenty feet distance he squatted down cross-legged before me. For quite five minutes he sat there silent, while I sat in my camp chair, smoked and waited. At last he spoke in ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... hardly would have cared to attend anyhow. Either he would have felt embarrassed to be present or else the couple would, or perhaps all three. On such occasions nothing is more superfluous than an extra bridegroom. The wedding in question was the one uniting Melissa Grider and Homer Holmes. It was generally unexpected—in ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... "curious" terms which he thinks will appeal to a clerk or a noble gentleman, his critics complain because the common people cannot understand his words. A similar situation appears in modern times when Arnold lays down the law that the judges of an English version of Homer must be "scholars, because scholars alone have the means of really judging him," and Newman replies that "scholars are the tribunal of Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public must be the only ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... were now turned to Scipio Africanus, who returned to Rome in B.C. 132. When Scipio received at Numantia the news of the death of Tiberius, he is reported to have exclaimed in the verse of Homer[62]— ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... "absence makes the heart grow fonder" [Bayley]; "absent in body but present in spirit" [1 Corinthians v, 3]; absento nemo ne nocuisse velit [Lat][Propertius]; "Achilles absent was Achilles still" [Homer]; aux absents les os; briller par son absence[Fr]; "conspicuous by his absence" [Russell]; "in the hope to meet shortly again and make our absence sweet" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... great friendships that await us on the library shelves until sickness shuts the door on the outer world, or death enters the home and silences the voices that once helped to make these friendships sweet. If Homer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Browning are to have meaning for us when we need them most, it will be because they come to us as old familiar friends whose influences have permeated the glad and busy days before. The last time I heard James Russell Lowell talk to ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... the flowers of Light. Its color was that of the Aurora—not in Homer alone, but in all ancient song, Dawn is rosy-fingered, rosy-hued. This resemblance to the morning is beautifully ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... relations with its author. No man is so visionary as to imagine that the mental operation of reading the Iliad, or the Phaedo, or the Divine Comedy, suffices to put him in communication with the personality of Homer, or Plato, or Dante. All effort is in vain to slake the thirst of a soul famishing for the Fountain of living waters from a brook, or to stop the cravings of a soul for the living Saviour with a printed book. . . . His words are 'Come unto ME all ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Henley did for I never left his house thinking myself fool or dunce. He flattered the intellect of every man he liked; he made me tell him long Irish stories and compared my art of story-telling to Homer's; and once when he had described himself as writing in the census paper 'age 19, profession genius, infirmity talent,' the other guest, a young journalist fresh from Oxford or Cambridge, said 'What ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... manner of their fall—a couple of as great heroes as were ever heard of in the annals of war; not excepting even those of Homer himself. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... doubted the existence of Mrs. Harris, "I don't believe there were no such persons." By the way, you ought to read DICKENS. He is distinctly funny, and I can quite understand his amusing our grandmothers. I generally turn to his works after a long day with HOMER or EURIPIDES. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... this was before my time) that a special victim of his passionless severity was a pink-faced youth with blue eyes called Randall Thomas Davidson. Personally, I rather liked him; partly, no doubt, on the principle on which Homer called the AEthiopians blameless—namely, that he had nothing to do with them. But there was a sly twinkle in the corner of Mr. Sticktoright's eye which bespoke a lurking sense of humour, and in the very few words which he ever bestowed on me there generally was a suggestion ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Ruskin, "is the message to us of our own poet and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's (Homer)? is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading of fate more happy? Ah no! He differs from the heathen poet chiefly in this, that he recognizes for deliverance no gods nigh at hand, and that, by petty chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by fool's tyranny, or traitor's snare, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... others, is termed musca. We are likewise informed by Horus Apollo, that in Egypt a fly was the hieroglyphic of an impudent man, because that insect being beaten away, still returns again; on which account it is that Homer makes it an emblem ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... great man's oration, "have their history," and it may be safely asserted that they did not steal it. It is dimly hinted in the verse of a certain ancient, that there was a time in a remoter antiquity "ere thieves were feared"; yet even this is cautiously quiet as to their non-existence. Homer, recounting traditions old in his time, chuckles with narrative delight over the boldness, wit, and invention of a great cattle-stealer, and for his genius renders him the ultimatum of Greek tribute, intellectually speaking, by calling him a son of Zeus. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... attributed exclusively to the master when at the zenith of his powers. His general verdict upon Michael Angelo and Raphael has much in it that appeals to a modern taste. Of Raphael, as a whole, he concludes that the master possesses the serenity of Virgil, but lacks the fire of Homer; and before leaving this same Letter XXXIII, in which Smollett ventures so many independent critical judgements, I am tempted to cite yet another example of his capacity for acute yet sympathetic appreciation. "In the Palazzo Altieri I admired ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... said Kate; and seeing that her aunt did not know, she went on to say, "there are notes and explanations. And there is a Homer—an English one, you know; ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arrest; and if he should fall into their hands alive, he knew that his last chance was over for liberating himself, by a Roman death, from the burthen of ignominious life, and from a lingering torture. He paused from his restless motions, listened attentively, then repeated a line from Homer— ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... hundred and ninety-one speeches of Lysias; of the hundred and eighty treatises of Theophrastus; of the eighth book of the conic sections of Apollonius; of Pindar's hymns and dithyrambics; and of the five and forty tragedies of Homer Junior. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is it just That here, in memory of all books which lay Their sure foundations in the heart of man, Whether by native prose, or numerous verse. That in the name of all inspired souls— From Homer the great thunderer, from the voice That roars along the bed of Jewish song, And that more varied and elaborate, Those trumpet tones of harmony that shake Our shores in England—from those loftiest notes, Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made For cottagers and spinners ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... which this is (next to the duties of religion) the surest path." His attachment to some of our own poets, and to the classic authors of antiquity, discovers itself in many of his pages; and his devout turn of mind strongly shines throughout. His allusion to Homer, in vol. iii. page 7, sufficiently shews how ardently this industrious servant, this barrow wheeler, must have searched the great writers of ancient times, to discover their attachment to rural nature, and to gardens. His candid and submissive mind thus speaks:—"If we would, therefore, arrive ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... poetry among the Greeks. The Hellenic philosophers, historians, and geographers of later times always quoted Homer and Hesiod as authorities for the facts they related in their scientific works. The whole first book of the geography of Strabo, one of the most statistical and positive works of antiquity, has for its object the vindication of the geography of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic; but to that awful character T have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for, from ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 28th the immortal dinner came off in my painting-room, with Jerusalem towering up behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in fine cue, and we had a glorious set-to,—on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and Virgil. Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's passion. He made a speech and voted me ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... remedied by teaching mere facts. The Greeks, many years ago, found the true method of imparting the latter grace and we shall probably not be able to discover a better one to-day. Their youths learned Homer and the other great poets as a part of their daily tasks, and by thus constantly dwelling upon and storing in their minds the noblest and most beautifully expressed thought in their literature, their own mental life became at ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... is one of the Heathen Gods; Iupiter's Grandfather. You may read a particular Account of him my dear, in Homer, or Milton, or any of the Greek Poets (pulls out a Bill of the Farce) well I vow its a Whimsicall Bill this; a charming Puff. Lud where's Sir Conjecture? I suppose he can give us a particular Account of it. for he knows ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... second upon the history of the first Crusade, and the recovery of the Holy City from the Saracen. But in both of them there was a splendor of diction and a wealth of coloring quite unknown to the rude mediaeval romances. Ariosto and Tasso wrote with the great epics of Homer and Vergil constantly in mind, and all about them was the brilliant light of Italian art, in its early freshness {71} and power. The Faery Queene, too, was a tale of knight-errantry. Its hero was King Arthur, and its pages swarm with the familiar adventures and figures of Gothic romance; distressed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... conscious of itself. Among the ancients, for example, art and poetry had gone through the whole circle of human interests before they turned to the representation of nature, and even then the latter filled always a limited and subordinate place. And yet, from the time of Homer downward, the powerful impression made by nature upon man is shown by countless verses and chance expressions. The Germanic races which founded their states on the ruins of the Roman Empire were thoroughly and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... solitude, those thoughts which unite us to others, much as we all dislike, when fatigue or illness has sharpened the nerves, hoardings covered with advertisements, the fronts of big theatres, big London hotels, and all architecture which has been made to impress the crowd. What blindness did for Homer, lameness for Hephaestus, asceticism for any saint you will, bad health did for him by making him ask no more of life than that it should keep him living, and above all perhaps by concentrating his imagination upon one thought, health itself. I think that all noble ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats |
